几周前广播里听到一则采访，内容是关于HARPER'S杂志上发表的一篇题为"What Goes Up - Does the rise of index funds spell catastrophe?"的文章。今天有空在网上找来读了。链接在这里：https://harpers.org/archive/2024/06/what-goes-up-andrew-lipstein-401k-doomsday-index-fund-catastrophe/
文章作者是一位职业作家，他采访了Michael Green之后写出这篇文章。Green被称为憎恨指数基金的人，他曾为Peter Thiel在一笔交易中赚了$250 million，目前在一家基金做portfolio manager/chief strategist。Green说passive investing并不passive，其实是"active managers with the world's simplest quantitative strategy. Did you give me cash? If so, then buy. Did you ask for cash？If so, then sell. Index funds aren't merely measuring the market, they're now a major force of distortion."
他对指数基金投资的批评主要有两个：
1）指数基金跟低进高出的原则背道而驰：某只股票涨了, 在指数中的权重增加，新投资中更大的份额会流入这只股。
2）“Dormant dollars (money already invested in an index) add to a stock's weight in an index but don't influence future price movements. Both active traders and changes in index-fund flows can have an outsize impact, leading to unanticipated volatility. Passive investing makes the market less elastic.”
他说index buying distortion contributed to a top-heavy, overvalued market. 他在另一个视频采访中说$10 million in-flow to NVIDIA stock contributed to $1 billion in NVIDIA's market cap increase。他把加息后大盘股价格仍居高不下也归罪与index buying.
据他统计现在45%的新钱流入index funds 。是bubble中boom的阶段。等到index funds里取钱多过投钱的时候，it will hasten sell-off, turning profit-taking into panic. 可能的triggers是generational shift或者market simply becomes saturated.
文章还说Michael Burry, one of the first analysts to foresee and profit from subprime-mortgage crisis 也相信passive investing 是bubble. It will end badly.
